Yiğit and Derman Evrensel were born on 21–22 June 2018 in Alanya, Antalya, by caesarean section at 32 weeks. Their skulls were fused at the vertex. In total vertical (type 2) craniopagus they faced roughly 180 degrees apart. They could not look at each other. Their father built a crib that would hold two bodies that never pointed the same way.

Craniopagus twins are among the rarest conjoined forms. Shared scalp, bone, dura and — in many cases — veins and a strip of cortex make separation a staged campaign, not a single cut. Doing nothing shortens life. Operating can kill one or both.

Turkish teams treated them first. Experience with this anatomy sat at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London with Professor Noor ul Owase Jeelani and the charity Gemini Untwined. The boys arrived in December 2019, about 18 months old. First came subgaleal tissue expanders so there would be enough skin to close two heads. After five weeks of inflation, three operations a week apart divided brain, vessels and bone — about 36 hours of surgery across seven weeks. Final separation was 28 January 2020. More than a hundred people across fifteen disciplines took part; a team of about forty was in the room for the longest cases. Jeelani later described the moment the brains parted as a “Moses moment.”

They went home to Turkey in June 2020. Rehabilitation continued, including at facilities linked to Ankara City Hospital. They could finally face the same direction. Later photographs of two toddlers in white head dressings looking at each other are the point of the surgery: not a perfect skull, but two children who can hug without turning away.

Social posts sometimes attach other names (Hasan and Hüseyin) or claim an 18-hour Ankara mega-case with robotic microscopes as the whole story. The documented Turkish boys who were born facing opposite ways and later seen face to face are Yiğit and Derman. A later pair, Minal and Mirha from Pakistan, were separated at Ankara Bilkent City Hospital in 2024 — also with Jeelani’s team, tissue expanders and mixed-reality planning — but they are girls, not the Antalya brothers.

Separation does not guarantee two typical brains. It gives two bodies the chance to grow without sharing a skull. That is the hug in the picture.

Sources

• Gemini Untwined case notes: Yigit and Derman.
• Great Ormond Street / Channel 4 documentary coverage, 2020; Eye News clinical summary of total vertical craniopagus.
• Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye: reception of Derman and Yiğit after return from London.
• Milliyet and The National reporting on the three-stage GOSH separation.